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Sunday, July 5, 2015

I. Catchem and U. Chetem - the Fraudulent (Yet True) History of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe

In their signature, on-air
sign-off, Click and Clack (the Tappert Brothers; hosts of National Public Radio’s
long-running, popular Car Talk automotive repair advice radio show) claim that “Car
Talk is a production of Dewey, Cheetham and Howe.”Dewey, Cheetham and Howe is a revered name in
law schools, business schools, and accounting classes, as perhaps the most
common placeholder name of law firms, accounting firms or consulting firms in
hypothetical case studies in classroom discussions or on exams. In 2001, an actual fraudster used the fictitious names to perpetrate several cases of bank fraud in Texas.

Dewey, Cheetham[i]
and Howe’s origins are shrouded in mystery.Although many online sources credit the Three Stooges with first using
the name, Barry Popik of the online etymology dictionary TheBigApple.com tells us that the Stooges actually used the similar firm name, “Dewey,
Burnham and Howe.”But whatever the
actual origins of the specific name – the origins of the joke – in one form or
another – dates back to at least 1839.

Frederick Marryat, John Simpson 1826

Captain Fredrick Marryat

The man who put Messrs. Catchem
and Chetem (the predecessors of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe) on the humor map was the
British naval captain, Fredrick
Marryat.After retirement from Naval
service, Marryat became a successful author of sea-story novels, and is considered
an early pioneer of that genre of fiction.He also sketched
Napoleon on his deathbed and devised the first system of signal flags for
use by merchant ships, Marryat’s
Code.

Although Captain Marryat retired
from the Naval service in about 1830 to write full time, he was in Canada in
1837 and is said to have served with the British forces during the suppression
of the Lower
Canada Rebellion.At the time, Marryat
was on an extended tour of the United States and Canada.He chronicled that trip in a popular,
six-volume set of books,[ii]
describing the countries of the New World and the idiosyncrasies of their
people.

Whereas his French contemporary,
Alexis de Toqueville, wrote an account of the United States with a serious political analysis of America’s experiment in democratic politics, Marryat’s
account is more focused on the people and his reaction, as an aristocratic
Englishman, to rough-edged, egalitarian Americans.He seems to have enjoyed his time in the
United States, and had a true admiration for their various national and
regional characteristics.Some of his
observations ring true today.

Of Washington politicians, he
noted that, “they never work at night, and do very little during the day.”

It
is astonishing how little work they get done through in a session at
Washington: this is owing to very member thinking himself obliged to make two
or three speeches, not for the good of the nation, but for the benefit of his
constituents.These speeches are printed
and set to them, to prove that their member makes some noise in the house.The subject upon which he speaks is of little
consequence, compared to the sentiments expressed.It must be full of eagles, star-spangled
banners, sovereign people, clap-trap, flattery, and humbug.I have said that very little business is done
in these houses; but this is caused not only by their long-winded speeches
about nothing, but by the fact that both parties . . . are chiefly occupied,
the one with the paramount and vital consideration of keeping in, and the other
with that of getting in, - thus allowing the business of the nation . . . to
become a very secondary consideration.

A Diary in America, Volume 2, pages 4 and 5.

Marryat also remarked on the
relative prudish sensibilities of Americans vis
a vis their English cousins; a trait passed down directly from the Puritans
who settled in New England.In the
1830s, it was not just the sight of a woman’s ankle that might be considered
offensive; the mere mention of a leg, or the sight of a piano leg (or, put more
delicately, “limb”) was considered immodest:

As
she limped a little in walking home, I said, “Did you hurt your leg much.” She
turned from me, evidently much shocked, or much offended; and not being aware
that I had committed any very heinous offence, I begged to know what was the
reason of her displeasure.After some
hesitation, she said that as she knew me well, she would tell me that the word leg was never mentioned before ladies. .
. .

I
was requested by a lady to escort her to a seminary for young ladies, and on
being ushered into the reception-room, conceive my astonishment at beholding a
square piano-forte with four limbs.However, that the ladies who visited their
daughters, might feel in its full force the extreme delicacy of the mistress of
the establishment, and her care to preserve in their utmost purity the ideas of
the young ladies under her charge, she had dressed all these four limbs in
modest little trousers, with frills at the bottom of them!

A Diary in America, Volume 2, page 246.

Marryat also commented on
American humor.He noted how Americans
had frequently been misrepresented in the European press; but offered that they
may have no one but themselves to blame.Americans, he said, were fond of “hoaxing”:

The
Americans are often themselves the cause of their being misrepresented; there
is no country perhaps, in which the habit of deceiving for amusement, or what
is termed hoaxing, is so common.Indeed
this and the hyperbole constitute the major part of American humour.If they have the slightest suspicion that a
foreigner is about to write a book, nothing appears to give them so much
pleasure as to try to mislead him; this has constantly been practiced upon me,
and for all I know, they may in some instances have been successful; if they
have, all I can say of the story is that “se
non e vero, e si ben trovato,” that it might have happened.

A Diary in America, Volume 1, page 8.

One of the stories in his book, the
precursor to Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, was presented as though true; but may have
been an example of the very “hoaxing” about which he warned his readers.

Shortly after its publication, the
story went “viral” (by mid-19th century standards).So whether the story was true, or already an
old joke at the time, or sprang fully formed from his own creative powers, it
seems likely that Frederick Marryat may deserve credit (or blame) for spreading
the joke.

I. Catchem and U. Chetum.

There
were, and I believe there still are, two lawyers in partnership in New York,
with the peculiarly happy names of Catchem and
Chetum.People laughed at seeing
these two names in juxtaposition over the door; so the lawyers thought it
advisable to separate them by the insertion of their Christian names.Mr. Catchem’s Christian name was Isaac, Mr.
Chetum’s Uriah.A new board was ordered,
but when sent to the painter, it was found to be too short to admit the
Christian names at full length.The painter,
therefore, put in only the initials before the surnames, which made the matter
still worse than before, for there now appeared –

“I. Catchem and U. Chetum.”

A Diary in America, Volume 2, page 243.

The anecdote must have been
struck a chord; it was picked up and reprinted in at least two British
magazines shortly after publication.[iii]Charles Dickens’ magazine, Household Words, repeated the same
anecdote in 1882, giving credit to Dickens’ old acquaintance, Captain Marryat.[iv]

The joke became an old standard,
repeated in various forms, with variant spellings, and without attribution;
beginning as early as 1844:

What’s
in a Name? – There is a firm in business at the south called Ketcham and
Cheatham!

[The attorneys] have kept their
tongues in practice by attacking each other by figurative references to other
firms, and the descendents of the old established firm of I. Catchem and U. Cheatem are
so numerous as to deserve a critical dissection for the benefit of virtuous
successors.

Robert Harrison, Colonial Sketches; or, Five Years in South
Australia, with Hints to Capitalists and Emigrants, London, Hall, Virtue,
1862, page 108.

The joke was repeated dozens of
times through the following years, sometimes with attribution to Marryat[vi]
and sometimes not.[vii]

The story was still repeated in the 1890s and
into the early 1900s, sometimes as though it were true – and sometimes with a grain of salt:

However, when we hear of “Taylor
& Cutter,” a firm of clothiers, or find that “Stickwell & Co.” are
mucilage makers, there is a strong suspicion of a intentional manufacture of
appropriate firm names.And that story
about the broker firm of “U. Ketcham & I.
Cheatham” has been
told so often that one hardly knows whether to credit it or not. – New York
Times.

The Star (Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania), July 20, 1892, page 2.

As equally deceptive is the
sign displayed on the glass door of the office of a prominent legal firm in New
York city.Messrs. Ketcham and Cheatham have a reputation of which they are justly proud
and their business is decidedly prosperous because of the fact that they
neither ensnare nor cheat their clients.

The Los Angeles Herald, May 20, 1905, page 2.

A commercial traveler who has
kept up the fad of saving the cards of people with queer names has accumulated
a job lot of curious cognomens from which the following are selected: Irish
& English, furniture dealers, Buffalo; J. C. Storeburner, grocer,
Baltimore; Duvall, Ketcham & Cheatham, Louisville . . .

The Minneapolis Journal, June 24, 1906, page 13.

The Butler Weekly Times (Butler, Missouri), June 13 1907, page 3.

Conclusion

Frederick Marryat joins a select
group of celebrities whose best known contributions to pop-cultural history are
largely unknown and completely unrelated to the accomplishments that brought
them fame during their lifetime.John S.
Hawley, for example, established the Hawley & Hoops candy empire that manufactured
M&Ms during the 1950s; yet he received almost no credit, even during his
lifetime, for inventing
the common, rubber toilet plunger.Likewise Charles Frohmann had a long, storied career as a Broadway
producer and famously drowned during the sinking of the Lusitania; but he is
less well-known today than the iconic image of Alfred E. Neuman, the cover-boy
of Mad Magazine, which was inspired
by a
poster from Frohmann’s production of The
New Boy in 1895.

Despite his many accomplishments,
the signal flags, the long line of successful sea-story novels, and heroic naval
career, few people today have ever even heard of Marryat; but most of us have
heard, at one time or another, Click and Clack, TheThree Stooges, or some law
school professor, dredge up the old “Dewey, Cheatham and Howe” joke (or some other
form thereof).

Our failure to properly credit Marryat’s
contribution to the comic lexicon has, for too long, deprived him of the
recognition he deserved:

Did we cheat him – and how!

[i]Cheatham, Cheatem, Cheetem or any of a number
of alternate spellings.

[ii] Frederick
Marryat, A Diary in America, with Remarks
on its Institutions, Volumes 1-3, London, Longman, Orme, Brown, Green &
Longman’s, 1839.Three additional
volumes make up Part II of his Diary,
which was also published in 1839.

[v] Mr.
I Catchem, for example, is a good man, - if you have enough money, his Habeus
Corpus can free you from the clutches of the Devil himself, - and then there’s
Mr. I Chetum, who knows how to dig up the best witnesseswho will testify you straight down from the gallows,
even if a noose is already around your neck.